The threat of the state gradually, imperceptibly moving towards an authoritarian tyranny is real enough. Since the legal corpus of most Western nations, certainly the Anglo-Saxon nations (Britain, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand) defers to and references the law in one another's countries as precedent, the erosion and undermining of traditional rights in any is an implicit threat to all.
Peter Hitchens documents some of the more tyrannical laws and powers now operative in the United Kingdom.
Our most personal details are shared with increasing willingness among government departments. Our recorded telephone calls and e-mails are to be stored. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, now likely to be combined with European legislation and Europol powers, is the basis for this enormous intrusion into places that would once have been considered absolutely private.
While still formally presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, we may have our assets seized without any such proof. The Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986 gave a court powers to order the seizure of property connected with narcotics offences. Later, through the Criminal Justice Act 1988, this power was extended to the profits from all crimes. These Acts were conviction-based, so that there could be no conviction of assets without the defendant first having been convicted. However, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 gives the police powers to confiscate assets without a conviction from persons whom they suspect of drug dealing or other crimes. Drug dealers . . . are convenient hate-figures against whom such measures might be popular at present. But this does not alter the fact that an important legal principle, of no punishment before conviction, has quietly but definitely been breached.
We may be detained for long periods of time if we are accused of "terrorism". This is a crime the government pretends to treat with special horror but with which it is in truth happy to negotiate when it suits it. So, if the horror is false, we have the right to suspect that "terrorism" is no more than an excuse for the taking of powers that the state wants anyway. [Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Liberty: the Decline of Order and Justice in England (London: Atlantic Books, 2003), p. 42f.]
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